For as obscure as the French edition has become (found it listed in one university library in a neighboring state), the English edition is even more scarce: the Amazon listing is the only reference I have been able to discover thus far.

I have since sent an email to the publisher (actually its successor entity, the University of Santo Tomas Publishing House) inquiring as to whether or not they have a copy or could point me in the right direction.

The book you are inquiring is already OUT OF PRINT. Perhaps, the Archives Section located at the Miguel de Benavides Library has a copy but this is for use only inside the library. Our apology, the website of UST Publishing House is not updated.

Thank you.

[name redacted]

Time to recruit friends / interested Trads from / in the Philippines for some international aid.

Unfortunately, no. Or, at least not yet! My original plan was to find the book in both of those languages and hire a translator to render it into English at some point down the road. However, there already being an English edition...

All hope is not yet lost: after SOMEHOW acquiring either the English edition or scans of it, I might suggest to the publisher allowing the work to be re-printed by another outlet, even print-on-demand. Will have to put some more thought into this... for one thing, I've already checked if the Lulu printing service can handle a book of this size, and every way I've figured the calculations it would have to be split into two volumes.

_________________Thomas Williams

Wed Oct 09, 2013 5:15 pm

Cristian Jacobo

Joined: Mon Aug 06, 2007 7:49 pmPosts: 552Location: Argentina

Re: Fr. Marin-Sola in English?

Thomas Williams wrote:

Cristian Jacobo wrote:

Thomas, do you read Spanish and/or French?

Unfortunately, no. Or, at least not yet! My original plan was to find the book in both of those languages and hire a translator to render it into English at some point down the road. However, there already being an English edition...

All hope is not yet lost: after SOMEHOW acquiring either the English edition or scans of it, I might suggest to the publisher allowing the work to be re-printed by another outlet, even print-on-demand. Will have to put some more thought into this... for one thing, I've already checked if the Lulu printing service can handle a book of this size, and every way I've figured the calculations it would have to be split into two volumes.

Noticing that Fr. Marin-Sola's book was brought up in another recent thread on the forum (from post viewtopic.php?p=15696#p15696), I thought it a fine idea to cite & quote the first references I encountered of the work -- which describes it alongside another text:

[ . . . ] the controversy between Marin-Sola and Schultes was sufficient indication that the textbook definitions [of Theology] can never serve to explain how certain theses which had once been accepted as theological conclusions could later be defined by the Church as expressing the content of divine revelation.[footnote 7]

[fn7] This was one of the most enlightening theological controversies of our time. These two writers, and the others who entered into the discussion with them, debated the possibility of the Church's defining as of faith a proposition which has heretofore been received as a proper theological conclusion. In view of his contention that a proper theological conclusion is a truth which has been deduced out of the body of divine revelation, Schultes denied this possibility. Marin-Sola opposed him, maintaining that the theological conclusion presents a truth which is only conceptually distinct from the body of revealed doctrine. The books in which their theses are presented are, F. Marin-Sola, O.P., S.T.M., L'Evolution homogene du Dogme Catholique, 2nd ed., 2 Vols. (Fribourg, Switzerland: 1924). Reginaldus-Maria Schultes, O.P., S.T.M., Introductio in Historiam Dogmatum (Paris: 1922).

Mons. Fenton then reiterated the content of that footnote in the body of a later chapter of the same book, expanding on the issue addressed:

Ibid, 58-59. wrote:

Now, to essay an adequate explanation of the theological conclusion merely in terms of a syllogism is to engender a dangerous confusion about the very nature of this science [Theology]. The syllogism as such is organized to give knowledge of a new truth, a statement quite distinct from the principles out of which it has been deduced. For this reason Father Schultes maintained that the true theological conclusion could never be defined as of faith since it was necessarily distinct, as a truth, from the propositions of faith which had served as premises in the theological demonstration.[fn4] Father Marin-Sola, on the other hand, held that the true theological conclusion could actually be defined as a proposition which must be held on divine faith since this conclusion was only conceptually distinct from the premises out of which it had been inferred.[fn5]

[ . . . ]

Now, only that doctrine which has actually been revealed by God can be defined by the Church and proposed to her children as something which must be accepted on the word of God. Father Schultes was perfectly correct in teaching that a proposition actually inferred out of the content of divine revelation could not be considered as intrinsic to the deposit of God's message. On the other hand, his doctrine that propositions once considered theological conclusions and later defined as of faith by the infallible magisterium of the Church were never really conclusions in the proper sense at all, could never be considered as satisfactory. According to his teaching, the proposition which has once been defined turns out to have been the resultant of a process of investigation which was never a real demonstration. Writers of one period in the history of the Church might have supposed that they were demonstrating a conclusion. The men of a later time would certainly see that they had done nothing of the sort.[fn6] They had merely examined into the content of Catholic dogma and restated the revealed truth in their own terminology. Consequently, according to the teaching of Father Schultes, these later writers could merely conclude that their predecessors had never actually performed the work of scientific theology.

[fn4]Introductio in Historiam Dogmatum, pp. 195-203. The two conclusions given here by Father Schultes express his doctrine most accurately. They are: (1) theological conclusions as such (quoad se), that is doctrines which are only virtually revealed, cannot be defined as dogmas; (2) theological conclusions which are such with regard to us only (quoad nos tantum) can be defined as dogmas in so far as the doctrine asserted in them is concerned, and even according to the mod and the formulae by which the doctrine is expressed. however (they are not definable) precisely in so far as they are known through syllogistic reasoning, but in so far as, according to the judgment of the Church, they are contained in the extent and the comprehension of formal revelation.

[fn5]Marin-Sola, op. cit., pp. 154-202.

[fn6]Schultes, op. cit., p. 197, actually cites a passage from Tanquerey to this effect. "Sometimes it happens that a truth which was first thought to be only virtually revealed, afterwards, the affair having been better considered, is seen as formally and implicitly revealed." Cf. Tanquerey, Synopsis Theologiae Dogmaticae, 19th ed., p. 109.

Edited to remedy an omitted parenthesis (my fault) and to more precisely replicate the footnote references, in case anyone would want to cite those references themselves.

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